In low-throughput situations, sample tracking and record keeping can often be handled adequately in a manual fashion. For example, one or several words about a sample, and/or an alphanumeric identifier, can be written or typed on a label that is applied to a container holding the sample. In some cases, additional (e.g., more detailed) information is kept in paper form, e.g., notebooks, and/or manually entered into a spreadsheet or database on a computing device, such as a personal computer (PC).
With the advent of medium- to high-throughput sample processing, it has become more challenging to track each sample and maintain information on it for ready accessing. Providing sample containers with bar codes has provided some advantages in sample tracking. As a practical matter, a bar code, per se, carries very little information, simply being an identifier. Further, there is a lower limit on the size of container with which a bar code can be used. In addition, a bar code itself is static information. That is, once a bar code is written and placed on a sample container, it cannot be readily changed.
Sample tracking and information maintenance in sequencing operations will become even more challenging as the industry moves toward microdevice, very high-throughput formats.
In an effort to meet the challenges presented by very high-throughput sample processing, a great deal of effort has been focused on software and networking solutions to large-scale information management. It is envisioned that software and networking technologies will permit instruments and applications of all types to communicate with one another and to share database resources for tracking the many, many samples being processed. Many of today's popular commercial LIMS (laboratory information management systems), for example, are moving toward the use of open systems architectures and platforms to offer client/server capabilities and enterprise-wide access to lab information.
Notwithstanding the advantages offered by such LIMS, it will happen that a sample, or many samples in a microdevice, will need to be physically transported between sites, machines and/or computers that are not connected by a network or LIMS.
The present teachings also relate to devices for carrying out separations of analytes, such as biomolecules (e.g., proteins, DNA, RNA, etc.), which have gained widespread use in recent years. In electrophoretic separations, it is often desirable to illuminate a plurality of migrating analytes, tagged with excitable reporters (e.g., fluorescent dyes), to stimulate detectable emission indicative of the nature (e.g., identity or composition) of the tagged analytes.